God this fucking masculinity bullshit. It’s not masculine to drive big trucks that are impossible to park and maneuver. It’s masculine to provide for your community, and to care about people without fear of how you’ll be perceived.
I get the sentiment and that it’s fun to get a rise out of these kinds of people. But that’s still a type of body shaming and penis size isn’t something that determines your worth. Think about what normalizing this sentiment does to good people who happen to have a small penis
Medium-sized guy here (no horse in this race mostly) to chime in and say I have seen a lot of penises and know a lot of men.
A size-to-awesomeness ratio does not exist, but a lot of men are unnecessarily dissatisfied with their bodies. When we imply, as a society, that you can overcome perceived body deficiencies by buying bigger vehicles, it seems possible we would be encouraging the kind of behavior and city budgets we don’t want in this world.
Well yeah, that’s why I’m tempted, but not going to do it. But you just know it would piss that type of person off. Not like I want to make myself a target though.
I live on google maps shortcut street. It’s about 1/4 mile long and kids used to be able to play street hockey and basketball in the street.
Now it’s treated as a drags strip by loud motorcycles, brodozers, and moms in SUVs late to drop off their kids at the preschool.
The bikes and trucks are so fucking loud that I’ve been thinking of building a noise meter with an animated dick that gets smaller the louder you are. This summer might be the year to do it.
“Dear America: You are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3 while 1/3 watches.”—Incorrectly attributed to Werner Herzog but just some random person on the internet it seems.
Still the quote makes sense even without the appeal to authority
Nah. America had Nazis in the 30s too. We’re immune to the most rabid varieties of fascism and authoritarianism because they don’t produce all the cool products Americans demand.
Americans might be plagued with racism and bigotry, but we’re way too lazy and invested in our own lives for a coup. Literally our bread and circuses are way too good.
It seems pretty common for travelers to lament the lack of good bread like at home. Bread basically a living organism that is ultra local. Good bread like at home really only exists at home. Local water, temperature, humidity, and other environmental factors seem to play a big part.
Ask anyone from New York or New Jersey about getting a good pizza or bagel in another state. It doesn’t matter who makes it or if they’re using the exact same recipe, perfect bread can evidently not be replicated outside the region. There is even a bagel company in south Florida, catering to snowbirds turned transplants, that claims to use water from that region to make their bagels.
I’m in VA and I have a couple of spots that sell their food “from NY water shipped daily.” Idk it is bomb ass bagels and pizza though. I’m not sure what the water does but I enjoy eating it.
It’s not as delicate a matter as you make it out to be. I was just looking for a kind that isn’t mushy like toast or full of sugar like a bagle. If classic sourdough or whole grain with an actual crust exist in the US it’s not trivial to find for foreign visitors.
Whole Foods has a great bakery. It was a loaf I bought there that inspired me to start making sourdough. Locally, we have “Cuban bread” that I’m pretty sure is really Tampa bread, if you get it at the right bakeries it’s great. Supermarket bread is mostly nonsense, is that not true elsewhere?
Yeah, good food isn’t trivial to find when you travel. I’m empathetic to that frustration. But judging all bread based on the cheapest abundant and easy to find bread a foreigner can find without any apparent effort seems like a mistake to me. I certainly wouldn’t judge all Italian food by what I found in my hotel in Venice. I wouldn’t judge NY bagels by what I found during my layover at La Guardia. And I wouldn’t judge an entire countries bread based on what I found in the grocery store.
It’s selection bias. Folks who resist get stomped on. The folks that remain are increasingly docile.
Repeat this process over and over again - from the Palmer Raids to the Blacklists to the crushing of the Civil Rights / Antiwar movements to the Drug Wars and Terror Wars - until your culture is properly domesticated and you can do whatever you want to them.
I think the anti-war movement - more specifically specifically the anti-draft movement - caused a lot of unintended damage. By effectively ending the draft it removed many young people’s connection to world events.
The Iraq and Afghanistan wars would have been met with a lot more resistance. If all those years of stop-losses and quadruple deployments had instead been years of drafting young people, a lot more people would have stood up the the Bush administration. That would have gotten a generation politically active and would have prevented a lot of what’s happening today.
By effectively ending the draft it removed many young people’s connection to world events.
I don’t buy that theory, as the broader global economic forces were a bigger influence on GenX / Millennial youth than any particular US military hot zone. And I loathe to think how the Bush/Obama admins would have responded to Afghanistan/Iraq if they thought they had unlimited free conscripts to throw at the problem forever, rather than a depleted reserve of voluntary enlistees and national guard troops to draw from.
If all those years of stop-losses and quadruple deployments had instead been years of drafting young people, a lot more people would have stood up the the Bush administration.
I don’t think Bush could have been meaningfully less popular with youth voters by 2004. His approval rating was already under 40% in the 18-24 demographic. Young people were regularly in the streets in protest all through 03-04. I was in college at the time, and there were parades of protesters running through the quad at the start of every term. But it was the Boomer voters who dictated the direction of the country, and their hatred of brown skinned foreigners was matched only slightly by their disgust towards Millennials.
The groundswell of opposition to Bush kept piling up until it fully materialized in the 2009 Dem super majority, but then… Obama didn’t get us out of Iraq. Hell, the reason he beat Hillary was because he came out as staunchly against Iraq while she waffled. The antiwar movement was widespread in 2008 and continued to truck on through 2012. But it wasn’t voluntary enlistment that strangled the war. It was a big wave of ostensibly antiwar Democrats taking office and then not ending it.
Debian would be a Volvo Estate, its the boring practical family choice, the owner is soneone boring like an architect or a financial advisor.
Arch is a Vauxhall Nova, second hand battered owned almost exclusively by teenage lads who spend a lot of time/money modifying it (e.g. lowering so it can't go over speed bumps, adding a massive exhaust to sound good but destroys engine power).
Fedora is something slightly larger/more expensive like a Ford Focus/VW Golf/Vauxhall Astra owned by slightly older lads. The owners spend their time adding lighting kits and the largest sound systems money can buy.
Slackware is clearly a Subaru Impreza, at one point the best World Rally Car but hasn't been a contender for a while. Almost all are owned by rally fans who spend fantastic amounts of time tinkering with the car to get set it up an ultimate rally car. None of the owners race cars.
OpenSuse is a Nissan Cube, its insanely practical. It should be the modern boring family choice, but it manages to ve too quirky for your architect while not practical enough for van drivers.
Now that’s not true, I’ve been known to s- whispering, clearing throat my council has informed me that I should end this statement without any further detail.
Nah, Arch is the reliant robin: it’s minimal, requires constant maintenance, and while it might flip in a corner, it’s pretty easy to get out and flip it back up ( it’s a really good learning and training opportunity)
I find that a large number of conspiracy theories are asking the right questions, just not providing the right answers. Does big tech want to control our minds with 5G towers and microchips hidden in covid vaccines? Probably not. Does big tech want to control our minds with social media and invasive advertising? Absolutely. Is the world controlled by a secret society of lizard people? Probably not. Is the world controlled by a not-so-secret society of billionaires and politicians? To a large extent. Even those awful racist or bigoted conspiracy theories start to sound somewhat palpable palatable if you filter out the racist or bigoted part. Do Jews make life for the rest of us miserable by controlling the economy? No. But replace “Jews” with “the owning class”, and suddenly it kind of makes sense.
EDIT: Is the government putting chemicals in the water that turn frogs gay? No. Are corporations putting chemicals in water bottles that turn frogs into hermaphrodites? Literally yes
EDIT PART TWO - ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: Palatable, not palpable. Words are hard.
Asking the right questions, listening to the wrong people.
Sure, if you completely disassociate them from the answers that they act on (5G towers, lizard people, Jews, gay frogs) then yeah they’re just hunting for the answers.
They’re also refusing to accept evidence they don’t like. Like there are two examples that spring to mind: the fact that the earth is an oblate spheroid and the fact that trans people existing is a natural phenomenon in our species. For the former there are mountains of evidence and anyone who’s spent any time near an ocean knows it’s true. It’s just not what your eyes or feet notice. They’re questioning their assumptions but they came to a conclusion and accept all flimsy evidence rather than more solid evidence that it’s not true. And they never ask why. For what fucking reason would people spend billions fabricating this conspiracy?
For the latter these people see a group of people who violate social norms in a way that they aren’t comfortable with anc do ask why. But they then answer it maliciously without evidence and repeatedly reject evidence and in the process eventually find themselves conspiring to hurt that group preemptively. Similar thinking happens against Jewish folks.
I applaud curiosity, I didn’t get enough sleep last night because of my own, and I’ve done a science before. But conspiracy theorists give their curiosity to dark parts of their psyche and let it run wild
The anti semetics might be right, but only if the rich people who are doing the bad thing are also Jewish.
Bluntly, I don’t think they’re doing it because they’re Jewish, it’s because they’re rich and entitled. But not all rich people are Jewish and not all Jewish people are rich, so it’s likely that they’re wrong.
The entire reason they do it is because it validates their instincts to ignore the real evil in front of them. There’s a reason why Republicans in particular have embraced increasingly crazy conspiracies as their party marches onward towards actual fascism.
As someone who has worked in IT communications, nobody deploying 5G is doing anything differently than for 4G/LTE/3G/2G or even coax/DSL/fiber/whatever. The only functional difference is that it’s faster. It may operate with newer tech, faster chips, different frequency bands, different modulation techniques, etc… But at the end of the day, it’s just a means to get data from here to there. Nothing more.
Also, the government (or “the man” or “them” or whatever), already have an almost universal method to track every living person in the country. You willingly carry this tracker with you at all times; to work, to the park, to friends and family locations, etc… If you haven’t guessed yet, it’s a cellphone.
A big part of increasing the network speed on commercial wireless networks (cellular provider networks) is reducing cell size, aka, the amount of space each radio covers, and just increasing the number of cells (radios) serving an area. They know exactly which cell(s) your phone is connected to, where those cells are, which direction the antennas are facing and how far you are away from it (by signal strength, or rssi). This can be triangulated with other antennas that can “hear” the same signal, and all of their metrics (location, direction, distance), and that information can be quickly collected and cross referenced into a very accurate location.
This can be done without any software on your device, and very likely without having a valid service plan. As long as you’re in range and the cellular radio is on, “they” already know where you are. And you carry your phone with the radio online at all times, willingly. Pretty much once you get to have your own phone as a teenager, they know where you are and “they” have been able to track you since.
Having apps like Facebook and whatever that get your location information from the network and the app relays it to Facebook (or whatever corporate entity), is the equivalent for the corporate overlords. You just need to invite them in by having the application installed, and it can report that data to them.
Most do this entirely willingly and could not give any fewer shits about it.
This is not speculation, this is part of the technical capabilities of the systems. Whether or not the government or any legal entity is using the information for this purpose is up for debate, but the fact that it can be done isn’t in question. There are entire companies dedicated to building solutions which correlate connection data to geolocate connected devices with a high degree of accuracy.
A nontrivial part of the reason these systems exist is for e911, which can relay GPS information to emergency services. A system which does not work very well for most counties because their 911 systems are too old and underfunded. If it works correctly, your precise location and altitude (to determine if you’re on the ground floor or not), can be accessed by emergency services in the event that it is required. Usually those features are only accessible or activated if you actually dial 911 (or your country’s equivalent emergency number), but they’re built out and exist regardless of if you need/use it. This was made a requirement by the government since your physical address bound to the number you are calling from, is not necessarily where you are when you make the call. In the olden days of landlines, every phone number would come up with the service address when you called 911. Since the service address was the only location you could use that line from, that worked. Now that we’re almost entirely mobile, it’s not useful anymore, so this system was devised. Then the government promptly denied sufficient funding to 911 systems to implement their end of the system, while mandating that carriers set it up.
It’s stupid. But I digress.
The fact is, you are being tracked. It’s being done for your own good (re: emergency services), but it’s very easily abused by those who can access it. People like government agencies.
Whether they’re abusing it or not, that’s a question you’ll have to figure out for yourself.
Actual conspiracy theory: Very small fish tend to die a few days after being exposed to electromagnetic metal detectors. Fewer die if you hold them above the metal detectors. This is an observable phenomenon you can try at your own expense. While I don’t think 5G is a significant enough increase in energy density to cause you to die, there is a good chance it’s enough to introduce destabilization in homeostasis due to body warming. Especially if you live within 100 meters of a tower. Babies tend to be fussier sleepers when sleeping very near routers or baby monitors using a meager 2.4, 5, or 6 GHz, attempt experimentation at risk of the children.
Whether they’re abusing it or not, that’s a question you’ll have to figure out for yourself.
Not a conspiracy theory: Snowden proved they are. Everyone in a 5 Eyes country is stuck having their private moments exposed at any given moment for any reason.
It’s a well known scientific fact that higher frequency waves carry more energy. For larger mammals, such as humans, these differences are trivial for the most part. Unless you’re standing in a location which is exposed to high amplitude and high frequency EM waves, the danger is generally nil. By high frequency, I’m talking about pretty much anything over ~10Mhz, and for high amplitude, I’m talking about power levels at or above 100W. Putting 100+W of power through an antenna is extremely rare, and due to things like attenuation, free space path loss, reflections, refractions, etc, unless you’re basically standing directly next to an antenna, in its transmission path, you’re fine. Bluntly, this is why cellular towers are set up the way they are. Usually an antenna mast will have a relatively small support pillar of some sort, usually a cylindrical “pipe” shape, or a set of support beams in an overlapping “x” shape, which narrows as it goes up. At the top it usually flares out for where the antennas are mounted, so if you climb up the mast, you end up behind the “business end” of the antennas; aka, they’re pointed away from you. This means that the vast majority of energy being produced is directed away from where you are. For everyone else, being on the ground or even in a nearby building, you’re too far away to be exposed to significant signal amplitude. We can it EIRP in the industry, or “estimated isotopically radiated power”. The EIRP drops off quickly in the first few meters after the antenna, as the signal expands outwards towards the service area; so even being within 15m is generally safe.
EM waves can be dangerous, specifically in the extremely high bands; IMO, this is what scares people. Extreme high band EM is dangerous at most power levels. These extreme high bands are capable of causing damage at the cellular level, possibly causing your DNA to break down. These are referred to as “ionising”. The bands that people most commonly know that are ionising, includes UV and X-ray. High band UV 2 and UV 3 are in this range, and x-rays are too. They’re all EM waves and they are extremely dangerous. These are all emitted by our sun, and mostly blocked by ozone. Some small levels of UV 3 might get through (hello skin cancer). What I want to point out is that these are all at, or above hundreds of terahertz in frequency. UV bands start around 800Thz. 80,000 times higher than 10Ghz. It goes up from there.
Light, which is also an EM wave is between 400-800Thz, and it’s widely considered harmless. Yet, common folks tend to start to freak out about EM above ~6 GHz because of a lack of understanding. 8Ghz is more than 100,000 times lower than the low band of UV (which is non-ionising). Any EM wave with sufficiently high transmission power is strong enough to cause damage, for most frequencies below 400Thz (aka, below visible light) would need to be significantly higher than what we normally use. For context, transmission power at the antenna for broadcast radio (eg FM radio stations), is usually around 100kW maximum per antenna system. These transmitters can be legally and safely placed in urban areas provided adequate separation between the antenna and the public, usually 30-40 meters. To contrast this, the broadcast power of WiFi at 2.4Ghz is usually set at or around 100mW (0.1W), with a maximum output of around 1W (legally at least). To further this example, microwave ovens use 2.45Ghz frequency EM to heat your food. This is usually combined with a very well insulated cage to prevent that energy from escaping, which both protects you and your home from being cooked, and also directs the energy towards the item being heated, improving efficiency. Most modern microwaves can emit around 1000W (or 1kW) of power. 2.45Ghz is, however, special, in the way that it directly interacts with water. This specific frequency can excite water on a molecular level to create heat. I won’t go much further into it than that. So it’s unique in the interaction it has. Something something resonant frequencies something something… Look into it if you’re curious. The point is that your 2.4 GHz WiFi is 1000-10000 times less powerful than your microwave. Other frequencies do not have the same effect on water or other molecules. If your microwave ended up emitting 3Ghz instead of 2.45ghz, you would have a microwave that consumes a lot of power, which doesn’t do anything useful.
I mention this to point out that the amount of power needed to affect something in favorable conditions is generally at or above ~800W of transmission power, in the equivalent of an EM “mirror” box. Consumer goods generally will never transmit above 1W. Even at 0.1W you can usually saturate your house, your yard, and your neighbors yard… At least enough to “see” the signal.
“5G” and “6G” mobile/cellular technologies operate in the gigantic band between 900MHz and 400THz (often on the lower side of that very broad range), well below the level of ionizing EM, and at power levels well below what would be dangerous. The largest 5G arrays run with power levels around 120W. Which is less than 1/8th the power of your microwave, and at a maximum of 40Ghz, well below ionising.
Scientifically speaking, 5G mobile carrier antennas are less dangerous than walking under a 1000W flood light, which people do without hesitation, or even a thought given to any possible danger from the exposure to the ~600Thz EM being emitted by the floodlight.
Bluntly speaking, it’s a stupid argument to be afraid of 5G for the transmissions themselves. You will not be harmed by them.
I only have a fairly basic grasp of physics and biology, and from what I know, the microwaves will heat up the water inside your cells… Specifically the 2.45Ghz emitted by the magnetron in a microwave “oven”. It will easily penetrate your flesh and heat you up from the inside out… Like, on a cellular level. The water inside your cells can very easily and quickly boil, causing the cell to explode… Especially when exposed to ~1000W of 2.45GHz EM energy. It’s non-ionising so the effects will be limited by the amount of exposure, and limited exposure won’t cause much damage. Your body will very easily heal, since you lose cells all the time. Prolonged exposure will kill you.
Also, activating a nearly 1kW magnetron in an open environment will have devistating effects on anything operating in the same frequency band, and likely anything on resonant frequencies, which will likely get you in trouble with the FCC (or local regulatory body), which can include aircraft, military operations, emergency services… It’s a long list. If they use radios as part of their normal operation, a powerful and unregulated transmission like this can basically jam their system making any legitimate broadcasts unintelligible. This can obviously put lives at risk.
With that said: do not do this.
I’m licensed to operate radio equipment in amateur radio bands up to 190W EIRP (if I recall correctly), and I don’t think I’ve ever used anything more powerful than 50W, I don’t own anything more powerful than 25W, and anything with the antenna attached to the radio (like a handheld radio) that I own doesn’t exceed 10W, most are 5W. For me, if I was using anything over 50W, I’d want a band pass filter on my antenna feed line to eliminate spurious emissions on resonant frequencies just to be extra careful.
That all being said, since the damage from this guy has already been done, I wouldn’t expect any further issues for him. I’m sure his biological systems have fully recovered from the exposure, and I don’t expect it to resurface again. If it was higher frequency (ionising radiation) then he would probably already have died, and even if he didn’t, he would be in for a lifetime of hurt, but yeah, 2.45Ghz is relatively safe by comparison.
Just to note, above x-rays are all the radioactive emissions that come from stuff like nuclear materials. Which is why they’re called “radioactive” … They’re actively emitting radio (EM) waves. Usually well into the petahertz and exahertz, while ionising radiation starts in the very high terahertz range.
Truly, thank you so much for responding. I love learning from experts.
This is usually combined with a very well insulated cage to prevent that energy from escaping
Faraday cage. Please. I’m a fool, not an imbecile. And to be clear, I’m well-aware of ionizing radiation bands.
However, my concerns lie in extended exposure. I’ll relate this to analog. Regardless of frequency, sound as quiet as 70 decibels can cause hearing loss after extended exposure. In the territory of 24 hours and longer, mind you. This is as quiet as, say, a hearty conversation, or a washing machine.
And this is a dual inverted sliding scale. Hearing loss zones:
| XXdB | Duration before hearing loss. |
| 70dB | 24h | As quiet as a clothes washer can cause hearing loss. Really.
| 75dB | 8h |
| 80dB | 2h |
| 90dB | 1h |
| 95dB | 50m |
| 100dB | 15m |
| 105dB | <5m |
| 110dB | <2m |
| 120+dB | Instantaneous |
I’d like to know where the scales for EM radiation amplitudes are. I’ve read a few studies but most of them focus on bursts or separated exposures. Very few of them observe sustained continuous exposure.
Also, I’m aware sound and radiation are not apples to apples, but my point of relating energy input and exposure duration is the same. If you ask anyone if 70 dB is safe, everyone will tell you, “Yes. Of course.” Which is not correct. Even 60 dB can do you further harm, if your ears have not healed from damage sustained immediately prior.
Some small levels of UV 3 might get through (hello skin cancer).
Now you’re getting into much more familiar territory. UV-A, the lowest band of UV, at UV 1 is entirely capable of causing sun-burns. It just depends on exposure time and pigmentation. Any sunburn has the potential to cause cancer. The more intense the burn and larger the affected area, the higher the chance more cells mutate, the higher your chance one of those cells becomes an unstable cancer cell, the higher the chance one of those cells becomes stable, and the higher chance for metastasis… From non-ionising low flux UV-A. Possible, but unlikely. Though increasingly likely as duration increases.
These transmitters can be legally and safely placed in urban areas provided adequate separation between the antenna and the public, usually 30-40 meters.
The EIRP drops off quickly in the first few meters after the antenna, as the signal expands outwards towards the service area; so even being within 15m is generally safe.
Inverse square, I’m familiar. And now we’re cooking with fire. Let’s elide frequency for a moment, pretending it’s irrelevant in the same way mechanical waves’ frequencies are.
Let’s assume 30-40 meters for 100KW antenna and 15 meters for ~20W macro cell is instantaneous minor damage. With each meter you distance yourself, the concentration of wattage decreases. What do you suppose the limit of energy density is for immediate damage when in direct contact? What do you suppose is the limit of wattage for sustained direct exposure on scale of 24 hours. That is, the equivalent of 70dB for intensity. What about sustained exposure for several years?
I don’t fear the effects it will have. After all, death will come to us all at some point. However, that doesn’t mean I’ll be reckless with the time I have left.
Also, I just started studying to get my Ham and haven’t quite wrapped my brain around a lot of the implications, so your input is very much appreciated. Thanks.
Regarding everything previous to your mention of Snowden – No. Simply no. We’ve already done exhaustive research, 5G isn’t even close to a high enough frequency
The whole damn system exists to place the burden of a living wage on the customer while the company paying peanuts can claim no wrongdoing. And the really sad part is: it has worked.
Edit: and there are many, many businesses that wouldn’t be in business if they actually had to pay competitive wages on their own. The invisible hand can fix nothing if tipping culture says to throw more and more arbitrary amounts of money at people to subsidize their wages yourself. At some point (I’d argue we’re past it already), the band-aid needs to get ripped off. Only then will we see self-correction. The almost immediate loss of many businesses will likely trigger other actions. It’s already a no-win scenario.
Yes, but one way is on the company first and one isn’t. Would prices go up if these places were paying living wages? Most likely. Many businesses would be insolvent because their business model was simply never designed to pay a living wage to employees. Others could remain solvent, but probably not if they continue to take so much off the top at higher positions.
And that’s exactly it: the market never self-corrects if we throw arbitrary money in excess of listed prices to solve was is ultimately an issue of business solvency and ethics. There is no economic theory that would support such an idea in any industry, but here we are.
The sheer number of businesses out of the space might even drive down rents. That’s the kind of thing I mean by “other actions”. But things cannot continue as they are.
None of this is even to mention the sheer number of people in the service industry who are also on government assistance programs. They have to be – none of the blame is on them. But my tax dollars go to that, plus I am expected to pay extra to subsidize their wages with tips. I effectively subsidize them twice while someone reaps the rewards on their yacht. All I’m saying is the yacht people should be taking the risks first. That’s part of being a business owner.
I don’t think a lot of Lemmy understands it doesn’t matter how you are subsidizing the wages, you’re doing it regardless. Like this clown who thinks food will be cheaper if more cash goes through the owner to the waiter instead of straight to the waiter. Regardless of system the customer is paying for everything, not the owner, unless of course his business is failing. Imagine the entitlement required to desire everyone change their model to make things cheaper for you, at a business that is completely a luxury. You could simply learn to cook instead of whining about tipping.
This is not true. I’ve visited the USA multiple times and I’ve gotten tipping wrong every time.
the market isn’t gonna correct if it goes away because you’ll still be paying the exact same amount.
This is also not really true. You look at a menu in Australia and the price you see is the exact amount you pay. $20 lunch is $20 on the bill. No added tips or taxes or anything.
For the customer, this system is better.
Saying that same lunch in the USA would ‘have been $14 on the menu in the USA’ would not match my experience. In fact, prices for most things were in the same rough ballpark once the exchange rate was factored in.
Caveat: my last visit was 10 years ago. My experience may be out of date. 15% was considered a normal tip, then.
I’m sorry you’re a moron, and I don’t take financial advice from people who can’t figure out something as simple as tipping protocol. And quit lying, food is definitely cheaper on average in the states, and greater quantity too.
The food is pumped with filler trash, so the quantity is definitely there, but the prices aren’t as cheap as you think, especially for what you’re getting.
Are you a foreign to the USA trucker who spent a good portion of the last 7 years south of the border? No? I am, and know exactly what I’m talking about, intimately familiar with farm/ranch end prices and also wholesale prices as I now own a restaurant. I’m the rare person who’s worked at every end of the food industry and the middle too, as well as being a frequent customer in 22 states and 8 provinces. and very familiar with currency conversions from all the commodity rates, shipping and ordering. Meanwhile you are some fucking guy saying “nuh uh” who likely needs to go to wikipedia to try describe current American farm subsidy policy.
Oh look, an Aussie that needs you know that. Yes yes, everything is better there, it has to be, why else would y’all spend so much time trying to convince everyone of it.
Tipping does still suck though, and the way it is in many states of the US, slow business literally means employees get paid less, which is pretty fucked.
Australia certainly isn’t perfect, and don’t let anyone tell you how great Medicare is here because it’s not what it uses to be and slowly but surely slipping into private health insurance hell due to its languishing, but heck, defensive much mate?
I am glad that I don’t have to deal with tipping. Tipping is trash and seemingly many Americans agree it’s trash.
Not defensive, I really don’t care for Australians, they’ve a way of conducting themselves that I find very fucking irritating. New Zealanders i can get along with.
Tipping is good bc you van pay the employee directly. What needs to change is that tips need to be mandatory and when tips fall short of a living wage the business must pay pay to make up.
A business is free to offer mandatory tipping and they do have to make up the difference if its not the minimum wage. The minimum wage could be higher of course.
What difference is there to you, then, between “employer pays a reasonable living wage to their employees but raises the prices of the food a bit to accommodate” and “employer pays poverty wages, forcing the customers to pay their employees for them and forcing tax payers to pay up when people earning poverty wages inevitably rely on government programs to simply survive?” If tipping is mandatory, the only people that benefit is the employer since they can simply double dip - spend less money on payroll AND force the customer to make up for your lack of willingness to pay competitive wages. Yes, under current law, employers are supposed to make the difference if tips can’t cover at least minimum wage, but that’s not enforced nearly as much as it should be, which puts the onus on the workers being exploited in the first place, and even then minimum wage in this country is embarrassingly unfit for supporting anybody.
The more important question to ask is “why am I expected to pay an employee when the money I already give to a business should cover wages in the first place?”
I’m a tipped employee for my day job. I make a decent base pay, but the tips make up for that in spades during busy seasons. I’ve bought my current car with tip money. Despite this, I fully support getting rid of tips if it meant my livelihood wouldn’t be a gamble depending on factors outside my control, and especially if it meant fewer people had to rely on government assistance and could better provide a livelihood for themselves.
I agree wholeheartedly! Let’s make tipping mandatory. In fact, let’s add it on to the price of your bill automatically. Better still, let’s just add it onto the menu price. Oh hey, we’ve come full circle.
I always assume people doing this are unhinged/crazy and I definitely don’t want to deal with that.
Sometimes they look nice enough.
Usually what happens is myself and everyone else on the train look at each other, have a shared look of “Morons? Am I right?” and then when that person leaves, we all share a group laugh.
So I guess what I’d say is, if you do this, know that everyone is laughing at you. If you say you don’t care, that’s a lie, you do care, that’s why you’re doing what you’re doing. This is not positive attention, this is negative attention. Please take a moment and reflect to be a force for positivity and not negativity.
Genuinely not necessarily true. I used to do this when I was younger. It wasn’t because I wanted attention, I just like the feeling of being surrounded by music
Genuinely, the world does not want to always take part in what you want. There are rules to society that most of us at least try to follow out of respect. Time and place to be surrounded by music. I’d definitely say on the bus or train is not the time or place. Agree?
I don’t personally do it myself just because I know the majority finds it disrespectful, but I actually enjoy it, especially when they are playing a good song and i can audile who the artist is.
So true. I have an older pair of headphones and they’re still the best sound I can get for my music. It’s the MOST immersive, not only like the sound is all around me, but right inside my head.
The new trend I’ve noticed, actually is people SINGING/RAPPING along to the music on their headphones, like, fully as if they were the only ones there, while on a packed train.
I mean, i guess it’s better because it’s not as loud as their shitty Bluetooth speaker at max volume peaking like crazy, but it is super weird and very fuckin annoying.
Like, cool, we get it you’re so super confident and think youre as cool as the person you’re listening to in one of their music videos. But you’re not. Because you sound like shit and you’re a dick. Everyone else is getting through this train ride, why the fuck do you think we want to hear YOUR rendition of what you’re listening to? Like, I really can’t decide which is worse. One is way louder but one is way fuckin weirder. People who do either of these are true assholes.
Some guy got stabbed on the subway in Toronto a few months back because he asked a guy playing music to turn it off. It really is a crazy world out there.
What’s absolutely scummy is that “laws are changing in your region” is not what happened. The law hasn’t significantly changed. What has changes is that the regulator is finally enforcing the law.
A website shouldn’t be forced to operate at a loss, which is what Facebook would be doing if they couldn’t strip mine data OR charge access to use the service.
The Law doesn’t care if any one company’s business model is viable and, Facebook being an American company which avoids taxes like crazy, EU politicians don’t care enough about them specifically to change said Law.
So ultimatelly and once they exhausted all legal recourse, Facebook have only two options: “comply” or “leave” (i.e. stop operating in the EU).
Somehow I suspect that selling non-personalized adverts will still make the EU market appealing enough for Facebook to operate in an that would allow them to comply with the local laws.
To me this looks like a play by Facebook to keep their higher revenue model going as long as possibly by breaking the rules and then relying on the slowness of regulators to keep going and any two-strikes policies to avoid big fines.
I had a neighbor who was terrible about staying in their lines. My dad taught me how to park real good though. So, anytime they made their depth perception my problem I’d take the extra five minutes just to make sure I was atomically close to their driver side door. One morning I was lucky enough to see them climb in through their passenger side and abuse their transmission to get out of our parking spot without hitting me. I was late to work that day but the satisfaction was worth the infraction.
Seriously. This year for a similar amount per night, while I didn’t get a whole house to myself,
Just a two bed room, bathroom, desk, mini fridge, microwave, and coffee maker to myself.
I got an actually good free breakfast every day, a pool, a gym, free room cleaning, free Internet, and there was like a mini food store next to the front-desk if I needed food in the middle of the night.
Sure there are crap hotels, but if you read reviews it’s not too hard to find decent ones. And there’s usually no surprise extra fees.
Pretty much the only issue I ran into was at one hotel, the claimed free breakfast was watered down coffee, a waffle maker, cereal, and frozen solid orange juice. Had to go out for breakfast every morning which was annoying.
No idea why you’re getting downvoted. Most of the time I’ve rented an Airbnb is because I’m looking for a homelike environment, kitchen, lounge, etc. Depending on what country I’m in sometimes it’s cheaper to stay in a hotel, sometimes it’s cheaper to stay in an airbnb. But they’re very different experiences, so it depends what you’re looking for.
Yeah, but at a hotel, do you have to wash the dishes, change the bedsheet, take out your trash, mow the lawn, retile the roof and breastfeed the house baby while paying the same amount of more like in an Airbnb?
I read once that a major reason the coffee is supposed to be good, is that the animals (in the wild) tend to seek out the ripest, healthiest coffee beans to eat. They’re abundant (prior to human intervention), so why settle for less?
But then we cage them and force-feed them whatever, so they’re just medium (or low) quality beans to start with. So even if you look past the cruelty, it’s not even the quality of coffee the reputation suggests.
Iirc correctly the monkey cats ( or however they are called ) actually just prefer a specific coffee plant that is more rarely used as the ones used for the vast amount of coffee in the world ( e.g. robusta or arabica). However, if the beans of this variation are used directly, it tastes exactly the same. There is a scientific paper about this. Long story short: people are drinking shat out coffee for no good reason. What is even worse, it is tried to hold these monkey cats in cages to produce more of this coffee. Again for no good reason. But people fall for the marketing pr gang that the coffee is handpicked by those animals, digested and shat out and they would not go for “yeah we need just to use another plant” because it wouldn’t be so exklusive anymore…
I love the fact that brother basically does no marketing as far as I know. They just end up shining like a diamond because they make a generally good product and everyone else around them makes absolute trash.
I only bought a brother printer because of recommendations from reddit. It’s so much better than my old hp inkjet that randomly started asking me to sign in in order to print or scan.
Why tf would I need to sign in to my HP account online in order to print in my own fucking home.
A printing kiosk or photo shop. They will be so much better quality. If you buy an inkjet and only use it once or twice a month the heads get clogged and you waste loads of ink cleaning it.
What the other guy said. Unless you genuinely need high-quality color photos on a daily or weekly basis, you do not need an inkjet printer. Go to a print shop, get it done right and it’ll be much less headache – but the vast majority of the time I’ve needed something printed, it has been swathes of black text on white paper. And a plain B&W laser printer does that perfectly, with no bullshit. I just recommend Brother because they’re a decent company.
They are but the pricing is ok, £2 a month for 50 pages. The higher end pricing seems to be around 3p per page which is what they price their toners at. They even allow you to rollover a decent amount of print credit. Now, if they had these printers in shops around the country and I could use the credit for those instead of just in my own home, I think it would be a really cool service. The local corner shop charges £2 to print a single sheet of A4 and then 50p per page after that.
Yes, I have a b&w brother laser/scanner than is 6 to 7 years old and it goes on without any issues (except networking BS at times, but that is likely my problem)
Yep, totally. In the vile shit that printer business is, Brother seems to be the only brand to not be straight-up anti consumer. I have a Brother all-in-one machine at work, it works out of the box on all devices, scans with whatever app, doesn’t push some bullshit custom nagware every time you print and, best of all, ACCEPTS NONAME TONERS without saying a single word of complain. It doesn’t refuse to print, doesn’t even mention that you may get worse quality prints (yeah right). It just prints and we don’t have to think about it and I really appreciate it.
I shit you not I have a brother laser printer that I don’t even know how old it is. My dad pulled out of our basement and cleaned it up and got it running so I could use it in college back in 2009. Skip ahead to 2016 and I’m using it for the table cards at our wedding. It’s 2023 and I still use it from time to time. I’ve only changed the toner once and cleaned it a handful of times, but that sums up the entirety of the maintenance while I’ve had it. I have to plug it into my computer via USB which isn’t so bad. But they don’t have a driver available for OSX anymore so it’s now a PC only printer. I’ll keep using it until it stops working or isn’t compatible with any computer anymore.
Regarding the driver, I had the same problem with running my 2005 HP LaserJet 1020 on OSX, but got it running with a built-in driver for a printer in the same build group (LJ 1022, maybe?) so keep that in mind if you haven’t already tried it. I know your printer is Brother and not HP, but there may be a native Brother driver already in the OSX build you can use.
You may lose some advanced driver functionality doing this but most printing doesn’t require it anyway. If it works you’ll be able to print just fine. You can also search your model number and see what Mac printer driver hacks others have come up with, since this was not an uncommon thing with Macs back when I had to do it a few years ago.
But yeah, on the sad day my old HP LJ non-networked non-enshittified printer carks it, I’ll be getting a Brother. No way I give HP my business now.
What about Epson? Specifically I’m considering one of the ecotank ones because I need to print stuff for board games like info sheets and so on that need rich colours and designs. Might even look into A3+ printers.
Are those useful? The per-page cost looks crazy low for an inkjet.
No joke. I had HP and I knew Brother was painfree experience and when I was buying said HP, I completely forgot about them. Few years forward my old HP avoided destruction by sheer luck and my brother’s will to try and tame it. These days I have Brother laser printer and it takes whatever you throw at it without complaints. It’s so obedient am having issues accepting such behavior.
I’ve moved to Brother from HP. Disappointed by the support for Linux. While the driver exists, a lot of them aren’t packaged. HP does a better job at that.
But never EVER buy a brother inkjet, its the same as all the other brands. You cannot insert bootleg ink anymore. My printer didnt accept any ink apart from the oem.
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